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Monday, June 27, 2011

You don't expect the genteel vampire Bill Compton to roll into dinner on a neon green longboard on wheels, but that's what Stephen Moyer, the actor who plays him, did when Back Stage met him near his Venice, Calif., home. "I go everywhere with this," the British actor says about his eco-friendly mode of transportation. The down-to-earth Moyer, it turns out, is full of surprises, as is the case with his HBO series, which kicks off its fourth season this weekend. As the song "I'm on Fire" coincidentally played overhead (Bill is highly combustible in daylight), Moyer revealed to Back Stage his real-life story, which has more parallels to Billy Elliot than to Bill Compton.

Moyer landed his delicious "True Blood" gig thanks to being unceremoniously dumped from another L.A. pilot he was hired on but never got to shoot. "We did the table read, and I'd been offered the part, and me and a bunch of other actors from that show got let go at the table read. It was incredibly depressing," confesses Moyer, who flew back to his London home defeated and vowed not return to pilot season, at least for that year. The casting directors of that pilot, however, had something else in mind.